The world snapped back into violent, deafening focus. A third sniper round screamed past Isabella’s head, shattering the brick wall behind her and spraying her with stinging fragments of dust and clay.
“ISABELLA! MOVE!” Marco’s voice was a razor s***h in her ear, severing her paralysis.
She dropped to the floor, the faded photograph still clutched in her white-knuckled hand. The image of her mother’s smiling, youthful face, linked arm-in-arm with Sophia Moretti, was a bomb that had detonated the very foundation of her reality. But survival was a more immediate imperative.
She scrambled on her hands and knees, using the rusted, hulking machinery as cover. The air was thick with the smell of cordite and old rot. Through the dusty gloom, she saw the second bodyguard fall, a dark hole bloss
